


Heavy Lies the Crown

by Raikishi



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, hurt byleth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29575590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raikishi/pseuds/Raikishi
Summary: Claude finds it quite funny. That the mercenary turned Professor turned Queen would dare to adorn herself with such a symbol of purity when she wore a crown stained red with the blood of her former students. Of course, he would never mention it.He’d vowed to be the sort of man who loved his future wife, after all.Arranged marriage AU
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 74





	Heavy Lies the Crown

**Author's Note:**

> An entirely self-indulgent piece. This has been sitting in my drafts for a while and I just want to throw it up. 
> 
> There's going to be mentions of past Edelgard/Byleth; but, minor enough I didn't think it belonged under the tag
> 
> Updates will be sporadic at best. Tags may be updated as we go along.

Fodlan crowns a mercenary Queen on a summer morning, a week into the Garland moon. The roses, typically used to weave love confessions, are taken, instead, for her coronation as a sign of a new beginning. 

Claude finds it quite funny. That the mercenary turned Professor turned Queen would dare to adorn herself with such a symbol of purity when she wore a crown stained red with the blood of her former students. Of course, he would never mention it. 

He’d vowed to be the sort of man who loved his future wife, after all.

“You don’t have to do this,” his mother says tightly, the most she’s spoken of the affair since he’d taken the entire court by surprise and betrothed himself to the new Fodlan Queen.

Hell, he’s fairly certain he’d taken the Queen’s emissary – Gloucester, he thinks it was - by surprise too – which, really, if you were going to offer your Majesty’s hand, you could at least look a little more pleased when someone accepted. Or maybe Lorenz simply didn’t like him. That was easy to understand. Claude wasn’t the likable sort unless he really tried and even then – 

He touches a hand to his sore ribs, a wry smile on his mouth. Tiana’s lips purse at the gesture, the scars on her cheek pulling thin with the motion. 

Just two Fodlaners bearing the marks of Almyra’s disclaim. 

Claude shakes himself free of the thought. 

“I’m sure I don’t,” he says cheerfully as he hefts the painting they’d received hours ago, “When has anyone ever been able to demand a task from me?”

He braces the painting against his hip, tilting his head as he examines the Fodlan Queen. For all her cruelty, Byleth Eisner certainly was a beauty. Goddess-blessed, one might say. He smirks, recalling the rumors. 

She doesn’t look like a Goddess reborn. Just a fair maiden with a striking stare. She’d be all doe-eyes and delicate features were it not for the stone stare. Not quite stern but … 

Claude pouts a little, trying to figure it out. Not quite stoic. Not quite stern. 

Just … striking, he finally decides. 

Unsmiling. 

Unamused. 

Untouchable. 

But perhaps that was simply how the artist had chosen to depict her. The new Queen held a tenuous grasp on three territories that’d, up until recently, had warred with one another. She had to be untouchable. Above them all.

He wonders if this is how she’d looked when she beheaded the Adrestrian Emperor or if she’d been grinning ear to ear in pleasure. He tries to fit a smile to her mouth and fast hits the limits of his imagination. 

“You did not survive some twenty-odd years here to be beheaded by a ruthless queen.”

“I’m to be _betrothed_ , maman, not beheaded” Claude corrects her. He spins around the room with the painting as if the Queen were here now and they were on a ballroom instead of his private chambers, “And I did not survive some twenty-odd years on sheer luck alone.”

“You have also never willingly stuck your neck out for executioners before.”

“Maybe the prize is worth it this time,” Claude says and flips the painting around so Byleth faces his mother. He wiggles the painting, grinning as he asks, “Look, isn’t she lovely?”

“Yes,” Tiana says shortly and Claude pouts at her because his mother’s not really looking, “Lovely as oleander.”

“Maman,” Claude sighs. 

“Why are you doing this?” Tiana asks, folding her arms, her tone sharp. The same Queen who’d carved respect into people who’d thrown slurs at her feet on her wedding day. 

“I want to see Fodlan,” Claude offers simply. He presses on, ignoring Tiana’s sharp inhale, knowing that if he stopped now he’d lose his nerve, “I think I’ve outgrown the stories about the other side. It’s time for me to see it for what it really is with my own two eyes.”

“Your Grandfather –“

“Is dying or will be dead soon,” Claude says, “Leicester does not exist anymore. It was signed away yesterday. Duke Riegan can do no more for me than uncle can.”

Tiana goes quiet at that, her expression darkening. She does not like to be reminded of Fodlan. She especially does not like to be reminded of Godfrey and they are both aware that it was a cruel choice of words on Claude’s part.

Godfrey’s death had struck his mother particularly hard. The news had wiped away the Queen she’d become and broken her down to the young girl that’d chased her love to another country. Tiana hadn’t shown her grief at court, of course, but the locked doors and his parents’ conspicuous absence in the days following had been an obvious tell. 

“Intercepting your mother’s spies – really, who raised you this way?” Tiana says after a long while.

“You did, maman,” Claude says with a grin, pretending he does not see the way sorrow bends her spine. He kisses the back of her hand apologetically, “And because of that, I’m your favorite son.”

She snorts but does not refute the statement. Nor does she point out that he is her only son. She only reaches out to pluck idly at his collar and readjust his shirt front. Her hand settles on his sore ribs, leaning just enough for him to feel the faintest discomfort.

“You have always been full of romantic notions –“

“Just like you maman.”

“– And brash courage,” she ignores his retort, her expression sober as she speaks, “This marriage alone will not open the Throat. A union amongst royals is only ever a treaty against war and sometimes not even that.”

Claude snorts and rolls his eyes, “I’m not a kid anymore. I understand that much, at least.“

Tiana says nothing, only looks at him, small and sad and full of disagreement. She heaves a heavy sigh and looks down at Claude’s hands.

“This was perhaps how Godfrey felt that night in Leicester Manor,” she says, her gaze distant enough he thinks she’s speaking more to herself than him. She takes his hands again and kisses his knuckles, “Alright then, go with all my blessings.”

Claude does not have to ask to know those words are the same ones Godfrey had spoken all those years ago on a summer evening. 

* * *

“He’s a con-man.”

“A coward.”

“Untrustworthy.”

The nobles were keen to offer their opinions of Claude von Riegan despite Byleth never asking. 

“Self-serving.”

“Conniving.”

She raises his portrait to the light, studying his face in silence. 

Claude von Riegan.

A two-faced man with two names to match. 

Byleth touches the Almyran script, above his Fodlan name, tracing the unfamiliar characters. If she put a line clean in the middle of his name, the two sides nearly reflect. A man of two faces indeed.

His portrait paints him with a smile and it’s quite unlike the small thing afforded by the nobles in her court. They gift smiles like miserly old men flinging bits of copper at the feet of a silly mercenary girl who did not understand the value of gold. Claude smiles as if he would buy her soul with coin if given the opportunity.

She cannot decide if that is better.

It’s a change, she decides, from the difficulties of her current court life.

She does not allow herself to think on it any further. 

Lorenz catches her eyes and the corner of his mouth twitches. A sign of his displeasure. She’d thought he’d be happy. A successful court visit was a rare thing these days. 

“What do you think of him?” Byleth asks. 

Lorenz perks up immediately. His entire body twitches as if he’d been only waiting for her permission to voice his thoughts.

“He is clever,” Lorenz shapes an insult of a compliment, touching a kerchief to his mouth to hide the curl of his lip. He frowns at the portrait as if Claude von Riegan’s dashing smile had personally offended him, “Too quick for his own mind sometimes. The Almyran court was rife with rumors. A bastard –“

“Lorenz,” Seteth cuts him off sternly, looking up from the tax records to aim a critical gaze at the noble. It’s the same tone he’d leveled at precocious students searching for a dark corner during the White Heron Ball. And it has the same effect now as it had then.

Lorenz bows his head as if he were a teen and not a grown man and a survivor of a war. 

“Oh, everyone is a bastard at court,” Hilda twirls her hair as she examines the portrait, ignoring Seteth’s muttered reprimands, “Dimitri was called that by Rufus’ loyalists. Edelgard … well, Edelgard had worse spoken about her.”

Byleth resolutely does not flinch at the names of her former students, only stares blankly ahead.

“There was some basis to Edelgard’s slanderers. Lest you forget, it was neither Kingdom nor Leicester that started that war.”

Byleth's hands go white-knuckled around the portrait frame. 

Hilda hums, noncommittal, “ _Anyways_ \- the Almyrans have always had a tendency to exaggerate – just look at their “undefeatable” general. And you didn’t deny _every_ court is rife with rumors.”

She makes an aborted motion towards Byleth. 

_“Usurper.”_

_“Traitor.”_

_“The Ashen Demon presumes too much. She will have no peace for daring to despoil a throne with her bloodthirst–“_

Byleth feels herself smile and it digs into the corners of her mouth like a thousand little pins. 

“Just because they're sometimes right doesn't mean the little whispers in your ears have much basis in fact.”

Lorenz harrumphs, “Nonetheless, a prince who garners such little respect and possesses even less power has a tendency to overextend himself for any chance at a claim to a throne.” He flashes Byleth a little look and folds his arms, “I do not think the Professor deserves a schemer for a husband. Not after everything.”

Neither Hilda nor Seteth offers an argument.

“You forget I grew up a mercenary,” Byleth says, exchanging Claude’s portrait for a bottle of wine. She ignores the look Lorenz and Hilda share as she pours herself a healthy glass. It wasn’t alcohol that killed her father. She doubted it’d be alcohol that killed her, “I never dreamt of a loving marriage. It matters little what my husband will be like."

She purses her lip over her glass, "I’ve outlived my father. And half of my students. I’m sure I’ll outlive my husband too when it comes down to it.” 

She tips the glass in a little toast, the humor in her words drying up when she catches the concerned glance Lorenz exchanges with Hilda.

They’ve been doing that more often these days. Had started exchanging those _looks_ after Enbarr. As if she had been the one to have been broken down into a husk of herself. She frowns and sets her glass down.  


“Still …” Lorenz frowns. His next words are stiff and halting. Almost hesitant. Utterly unlike the general that’d screamed down Byleth’s plan to march towards Fhirdiad in a foolish attempt to save a few Kingdom nobles, “Would a Fodlan noble not suffice? In these times … it would help to unite the country and I can certainly make recommendations.”

“Marry Empire and be poisoned by my supper wine?” Byleth laughs, “Or pick through rubble and glass for a Kingdom noble?”

“There is always Leicester,” Lorenz says stiffly.

“I’m not marrying a student," Byleth says over Hilda's muttered, "Technically she _is_ marrying Leicester –"  


“But you nearly marri –“ 

“At least he’s handsome,” Hilda interrupts but Byleth hears the rest of Lorenz’s statement anyways.

She takes a sip of her wine, pretending her hands do not tremble as Enbarr’s red throne room returns to her in vivid color. The memory floats up like a bloated corpse, full of dark shadows and grisly imagery.

“I did _not ‘_ nearly marry’ anyone,” the words are coldly spoken and far too sharp.

“And a Fodlan noble might not unite us as you might think Lorenz, “ Seteth says quickly, no doubt sensing the swift change in mood, “There is no love lost between Kingdom and Empire. Every day we receive reports of a new uprising at their former borders. As for Leicester … well, there are many displeased about being part of the Kingdom again.” He gestures to Claude's portrait, "Tiana may once have been Leicester's; but, they do not claim Khalid."  


“Perhaps for good reason,” Lorenz mutters and then gathers himself, “Then outside Fodlan. It does not _have_ to be Almyra. Sreng – “

“For the purpose of reconstruction and rebuilding … Sreng and Brigid do not have as much to offer as Almyra does,” Seteth flicks his gaze up, studying the portrait Hilda’s now holding up and makes a soft noise under his breath, “And I suppose their prince is handsome enough.”

“It’s the cut of his jaw,” Hilda says, nodding. She steals Byleth’s wine glass and makes a show of examining each aspect of the portrait, muttering low comments about the colors they’ve painted Claude in – gold, how brazen – 

“Professor –“

“Lorenz, we proposed and they accepted. We’re not the sort to go back on our word, are we?” Byleth asks, “No need to give them another reason to dismiss Fodlaners as cowards. Also, I have little intention of insulting their prince and opening us up to yet another pointless war.”

Lorenz’s eyes dim. He toys with his kerchief for a moment, no doubt debating himself on whether or not to say more. He purses his lips and shakes his head before crossing the room to join Seteth, who hands him a heavily marked document that makes the furrow between Lorenz’s brow deepen even further. 

Byleth leans back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. She looks about for her wine bottle and narrows her eyes when she finds it in Hilda’s lap instead. Strangling a sigh, she picks up the newly drafted treaties Seteth has compiled for her.

In the quiet that follows, Hilda debates herself on whether the lock of hair painted over Claude's eye was meant to add a bit of roguish charm or if it meant that he was a sloppy man who cared little about his appearances. She decides on the former and then debates Lorenz on whether or not that made Claude charming or irritating.

* * *

“You don’t have to do this you know,” Hilda says later that evening after both Lorenz and Seteth had left.

Byleth is surprised to hear the words. Hilda wasn’t the sort to question her on things like this. Hilda had grown up to be the most practical of the Golden Deer. And she simply understood that sometimes things had to be done the way they were.  
  
That sometimes - all she could do was stand aside and watch the death of a king who'd never truly ruled ...  


Byleth shakes herself. 

“No?” she raises a brow, trying to smile around the memories.  


“No,” Hilda declares firmly. She rises from her chair and crosses the room, taking the beaten quill from Byleth’s ink-stained fingers. She runs her fingers over Byleth’s sword callouses, massaging away the tension. Byleth catches her gaze once and has to look away, “Just because Edelgard –“

Hilda squeezes, holding Byleth's hand tight when she flinches, “Had dreams of a united Fodlan, doesn’t mean you bear the responsibility of seeing it through.”

_“I will … leave this country in your care. My teacher. Perhaps your path … will lead somewhere I would be happy to see.”_

Byleth forces a smile and shakes her hand free, “Hilda … I was a merc. And never superstitious enough to be bound by someone’s dying words.”

“Maybe,” Hilda props her hip on the desk, staring her down. The same steady General that’d guarded their flank and kept Byleth from running to Dimitri’s aid as the Empire had descended on him, “But, you were our Professor. And you were soft-hearted enough to care for all of us. We burdened you with a war. Then a throne,” Hilda squeezes when Byleth tries to free her hand, “… And now a marriage. Professor, you know you don’t have to go along with this. There are other –”

“I wanted this,” Byleth says, relieved when the words come out strong. She’d spoken them so often in the last few months. A few thousand more times and she might believe them. Holding the smile fast to her face she adds, “And it is no great sacrifice being wed to a handsome prince. Certainly far easier a task than teaching a class of hellions basic hand-to-hand combat. Especially, a certain lady of house Goneril who pretends to faint from the stress of simply standing on the training grounds.”

Her words do little to convince either of them; but, Hilda is gracious enough she doesn’t remark further. She only pats Byleth’s hand and then turns her attention to the last contracts Byleth had been reading over, “Well … I just hope he’s kind to you Professor. Goddess knows you deserve it.”

Byleth does not correct her, knowing well that she does not. 

* * *

“We’ll miss you,” to Claude’s surprise and his mother’s thinly veiled disdain, his eldest cousin sees him off. The lie is obvious, bright as the warning colors painted on a snake. 

Claude can feel his mother’s gaze on them as they shake hands. They, all of them, pretend to not remember that last time Claude had shaken his cousin’s hand. Claude’s skin prickles in anticipation of a poisoned needle, waiting for that telltale prick between his fingers. 

“Likewise,” Claude says, glad to see that his hand does not shake when he pulls away. He leans against his wyvern - ~~protecting his back~~ , “A Fodlan court surely cannot match the grandeur of Almyra.”

“Well, obviously,” his cousin shakes his head and then pulls a sorrowful face, “And that Queen of theirs … well, the rumors are unkind. It’s a shame for us to offer our crown prince –”

“'Offer' - it's no great sacrifice being wed to a mercenary turned general,” Claude laughs, waving him off, “I’ve always appreciated strong women.”

His cousin hums, low and thoughtful. His face twitches as if he were terribly troubled. Claude doesn’t buy a second of it.

“Ah, but Khalid, you’d always said you would marry for love.”

“Who’s to say I didn’t?” Claude asks immediately, “Byleth is a beauty. Goddess reborn - they say, and I find myself quite taken with the Fodlan Queen.”

Too late he spies the serpent’s smile. The little gleam of teeth and the disparaging look in his cousin’s eyes. 

“Well,” his cousin nods, the corner of his mouth dimpling in an unpleasant smile as he looks to Tiana first then Claude, “I suppose this is to be expected of _you_.”

Claude offers no rebuttal. Only looks west.


End file.
